Within a week, over 5,000 individuals have urged the Senate to pass meaningful patent reform. These individuals represent over 900 inventors, 700 investors, and well over 1300 entrepreneurs who drive the innovation economy—yet are suffering billions of dollars in losses at the hands of patent trolls and rampant litigation.

What is meaningful reform? There must be immediate changes to remove incentives from the patent troll business model: fee shifting to raise trolls' financial stakes, for example; strong end user protections to stop trolls from targeting users of off-the-shelf technologies; transparency provisions preventing bad actors from hiding behind shell companies, striking with misleading demand letters, then stepping back into the shadows.

We've made considerable progress in our fight against patent trolls. The House, you may remember, resoundingly passed the Innovation Act last year. The President has since said he would sign it, and make a strong statement in support of reform in this year's State of the Union address. Now, we await on the Senate to act (speaking of which, have you signed our letter urging such action?).

Even with this progress, however, we've long worried about the demand letter problem. Last year, when we launched our demand letter database Trolling Effects, we wrote:

The only thing standing in the way of patent reform is the United States Senate.

The House passed the Innovation Act in December with a bipartisan 325-91 vote. President Obama has said he'll sign the bill and asked Congress during his State of the Union to "pass a patent reform bill that allows our businesses to stay focused on innovation, not costly and needless litigation."

It's now up to the Senate to help put an end to costly, destructive patent troll litigation and threats. And they need to hear from you: you the inventor, you the entrepreneur, you the investor, and especially you the concerned individual.

In the latest blow to patent trolls, 42 state and territorial attorneys general—that's right, 42!—wrote a letter today calling on the Senate to pass meaningful patent reform. As the AGs write:

So-called patent trolls stifle innovation and harm our economy by making dubious claims of patent infringement and using the threat of expensive litigation to extort money from small businesses and nonprofits. We have received many complaints from these businesses and nonprofits, our constituents, who are desperate for relief from the misuse of the patent system. While these threats were once focused on tech businesses, they are now levied at all manner of businesses, including banks, hospitals, restaurants and hotels.